Balenciaga: Lucy Skywalkers Rule

Godfrey DeenyOctober 03rd, 2006 @ 11:20 AM

We have seen the future of fashion, or at the very least, next spring and summer, and its name is Balenciaga.

In a strikingly cool collection, the house’s designer Nicolas Ghesquiere set a whole new direction for fashion – android chic. High-tech and hard-edged industrial, the collection transposed the models from familiar faces into the sexy knights of a fabulous round table.

“I wanted robotic and android, a beautiful future,” Ghesquiere told FWD backstage. He succeeded, banishing from our memories with one show the retro glut that was Milan.

Kicking off with re-worked tuxedos and dress shirts, cut close to the torso with power shoulders and priestess high collared white shirts, worn with cigarette pants and metallic belts – all of them looked chic, hot and thoroughly wearable.

The Olsen twins sat nearby open-mouthed throughout the show, as these pompous little munchkins got to see what a real, as opposed to celebrity, designer can do.

Ghesquiere also hit the mark with accessories which included a fantastic new high heel, composed of faux metallic straps and a machine tooled chain platform that everyone is going to want to wear. Plus, most models wore Balenciaga’s excellent new eyewear – wraparounds or goggles with chrome semi-circular studs, as if ground control was monitoring their every move.

Remarkably, Ghesquiere, the champion of bigger volumes in the past two seasons, went pencil thin for spring, showing a bare handful of the bigger proportions.

Backed up by a great soundtrack – DJ Michel Gaubert brilliantly mixed the abstract Hip-hop group Cut Chemist with doses of Salt-N-Pepa – it made for an epochal show.